Songs For Your Mother

It says, ‘you could get out of the hospital and get on a plane’. Then my mind hits a wall. The idea of it makes me physically tremble, I am hot and my throat is dry. I realise I’m panicking. It takes me back to the road, to those final seconds.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I say. It slips out.
‘It isn’t your fault. There wasn’t anything you could’ve done. I’m the one who should be sorry. If I hadn’t begged Will to come home, it might not have happened. You wouldn’t have been there,’ TSP says, and she starts to cry.
It’s hard to watch women cry. It breaks something inside of men. At least it does for me. I remember it as a child. I would catch my mother sometimes, after my father left, sitting there with tears falling down her face. It’s even harder for children, as you don’t understand how relationships work, and how much people invest in them only to see them destroyed, dashed on the rocks and sunk like ships in fierce storms.
I start to sniff, and I can feel tears forming in the corners of my sockets, and I wipe the wet away. It doesn’t help, the waterworks are back, and I am crying as well. We are quiet for a few moments, and our tears are done, at least for now.
TSP dries her face with the back of her hand. I don’t know what to say. I reach out and take her hand. It’s the only thing that I can think of. I give it a squeeze. I try to comfort her. It’s pretty much all I have in that department.
‘It was going to be the two of us, it was always going to be that, and now it’s not,’ she says.
‘I know it was,’ I say.
This is heartbreak. It was always going to be TSP and Will. They would have got married. It would have been an awesome wedding; all of our friends would have been there, and I would have made a kicking best man speech. The thing is, I don’t know if TSP knew Will planned to propose when he got back, and that he had the ring. It will be in the flat somewhere. I want to tell her this. However, I know this isn’t the moment. I’m worried if I tell her now, it will completely destroy her. The ring is hers though, and I know that one way or another Will would want her to have it.
‘I don’t know what I would have done if I’d lost you both. It would have been too much. I…’ She shrugs, trails off.
When she says this, it makes me think back to university, when we all first met and how close we’ve always been. It’s been four years since we left and it feels much longer. I am finding TSP’s presence here in the hospital profoundly affecting.
‘You know what I thought when Will’s mother called and said there had been an accident? I thought it would be so unfair if it ended like that, that it would be a ridiculous waste. All those years of love and friendship, and for it to end like that would have been soul destroying,’ TSP says.
TSP is making me feel horribly sad. There are more tears welling, and I feel like a useless man. I wipe the water away, and the tears keep rolling. I’m not sure I can take a lot more of this right now. I’m on the ledge, the same one that TSP is on, and I fear we will both fall. I try to focus, and I try to stay strong, although I’m not holding it together as well as I’d like. I’m not sure me with tears on my face is helping anyone.
‘I’m sorry, I know I’m not helping, and somehow I should be helping,’ TSP says.
‘You’re doing fine. Look at me, it’s okay,’ I say, and TSP offers a weak smile as I thumb water from my cheeks.
‘Is it? It’s been months, and it still feels like it happened yesterday. It hurts, and that’s all it does. I know eventually that will change, and then I worry about what happens when it does. When it becomes more distant. I’m scared about that; it keeps me awake at night.’
I know exactly what she means when she says this. TSP is worried about forgetting Will as if the pain and the loss are now the only things that connect her to the person that she loved. Once those are gone, what do you have left other than fond feelings and good memories? I don’t know the answer, and I don’t know what to say. So, I tell her the only thing that I know to be true.
‘Will loved you. That’s the only thing and when you’re no longer hurting it won’t change that,’ I say.
TSP gives a big sniff. She tries to smile, and her face brightens.
‘Thank you for saying that. Everyone loved Will, didn’t they? At the funeral, there were a lot of people. I don’t even know where they came from, and everyone was so young, all those school and sixth-form friends, everyone from university, and then all of the family. Sorry, I shouldn’t, I’m not very good at this.’
‘No, it’s fine,’ I tell her. I want to hear about it. Somehow, I don’t mind what it is. I want to hear everything about what happened to Will in those long weeks that I slept a dreamless American sleep. I want to know who was at the funeral because I should have been there too. I never got to say goodbye. We didn’t have any last words. All we had was that final look when we knew we weren’t going to make it. That was the end of our story, and I feel cheated. TSP starts to run through the names of the people who were there. Some of them we both knew well, others in passing, and others we had